Mistress of the Catacombs

22

Sharina was glad they were going to walk, not ride, to the parley with Count Lerdoc. Though…

She smiled at herself. She wasn’t a good rider, so the struggle to control her horse would’ve been something near and common to worry about instead of the formless fears now dancing about her like flies over a sheepfold.

“Your highness…” said Attaper. The commander of the Blood Eagles spoke facing Carus with his back to the Blaise army half a mile distant. “I won’t let you do this! I must come with you—at least me if not the whole regiment.”

A moment before, Carus had joked with Sharina about whether the Pewle knife would pass unremarked if she wore it in place of one of the pins in her formal coiffeur. With a harshness that didn’t seem to come from the same mouth, the king snarled, “Lord Attaper, you’re a good man; but if you insist on risking the safety of the kingdom so everything fits your sense of propriety, I’ll cut you down where you stand.”

“This isn’t propriety!” Attaper said. “This is safety, pure and—”

“Milord, I warned—” shouted Carus as he reached for his sword hilt.

The blade came up a finger’s breadth from the sheath before Sharina grabbed the king’s wrist with both hands. She threw her full weight on Carus’ sword arm as though she were working a stiff pump lever. The king’s great strength still lifted the sword a hair farther before he relaxed and shot the blade home again.

Lord Lerdain stared as if they’d all gone mad. Sharina suppressed an urge to giggle hysterically. They probably were mad to attempt this plan, but what was that balanced against the only chance to save the Isles from chaos?

“Sorry,” Carus muttered. He grinned wryly. “I’ve been saying that a lot. Well, maybe if I’d said it more the first time around, we wouldn’t all be where we are now.”

“Lord Attaper,” Sharina said, stepping back from the man in her brother’s body. “Nobody doubts that you’re willing to die for your king. Please don’t insist on dying this way, though. Because you will, you know.”

Attaper swallowed hard. His left hand gripped his right with a fierceness that would’ve broken the bones of a lesser man. “Your highness,” he said in a husky whisper. “I was out of line. Forgive me. And may the Lady go with you to this parley, since I cannot.”

Carus stepped forward and embraced the chief of his bodyguard. “I’d be honored to have you close my side in any battle, Lord Attaper,” he said. “But today I’m making sure there won’t be a battle.”

He looked at Sharina, then to Lord Lerdain. “Ready to meet your father, boy?” he said.

“Yes sir,” Lerdain said. His voice broke; he paused and cleared his throat.

Lerdain wore borrowed clothing, good-quality tunics and a short red cape of fine wool—the latter an officer’s garment much fancier than what he’d had when they’d spirited him out of the Blaise camp. His calf-length boots were tooled leather, and the helmet Carus had fitted him with had wings and thunderbolts cast into the bronze. Only the lack of a sword belt distinguished the youth from any young officer in the royal army.

“Let’s go, then,” the king said. He waved toward the Blaise lines, then stepped forward.

Both armies were drawn up in full array. The Blaise line was longer than that of the royal forces, but it looked like an armed mob compared to the saw-edged weight of the royal ranks.

A cornet blatted an order from the royal line. Sharina and the boy both looked over their shoulders. The phalanx was shifting, each rank advancing while the previous front line countermarched to the rear of the sixteen-deep mass. Their pikes waved overhead like a giant grainfield through which serpents slid.

“Just a demonstration,” Carus said quietly. “It doesn’t mean anything—except it shows they can do it. Will your father understand what that means, boy?”

“Yes sir,” said Lerdain. “My father is a soldier, sir.”

They’d given Lerdain a tour of the royal army during the morning hours, while messengers rode back and forth between the camps to arrange the parley. The boy had been numb with confusion at first, but interest and a genuine aptitude soon brought him around.

“Aye, I’d heard that,” Carus said. His voice had a touch of a lilt again, a sign of excitement that made him seem cheerful. “Counted on that, counted on him knowing what a battle would mean….”

He caressed his sword pommel in an eagerness that no one could mistake. Sharina touched her fingertips to the back of the king’s hand. “Aye, girl,” he said. “I remember.”

The ability of the phalanx to march and countermarch in close order meant they had discipline beyond the conception of any troops in the Isles for the past thousand years. Discipline on the parade ground didn’t win battles. Five thousand men with the discipline to advance behind eighteen-foot pikes; filling in the places of the men who died in the rank ahead, never slowing, never flinching—that won battles.

The only question was whether Lerdoc realized, as his son and Sharina did, that Carus hadn’t created an army for the parade ground. If the count misjudged what he saw, he’d learn the truth at pike point; but the Isles wouldn’t long survive him.

Two men had set out from the center of the Blaise line. The count, his armor gilded but still functional, was the older template of this boy. His belly sagged beneath his cuirass, and his face was already ruddy with the exercise of walking into the center of no-man’s-land, but his left hand kept his scabbard from swinging with an experienced grip.

The man with him was a near giant—seven feet tall and solidly built. He carried a round, ironbound shield broad enough to protect two—as it was meant to do. Bare in his right fist was a sword with a long, hooked blade. The weapon was heavy enough that most men would have gripped it with both hands.

“Lady Sharina?” Lerdain said, leaning forward past Carus so he could meet her eyes. “Why are you coming with us? Instead of your brother’s bodyguard, I mean?”

“He doesn’t need a bodyguard, milord,” Sharina said.

Carus laughed cheerfully. “What I need, lad,” he said, “is somebody to jump on me when I start to act like a hotheaded fool. I trust Attaper to do many things for me; but not that one, not as quickly as the lady will.”

He laughed again. “I’ve only once been in a place my sword couldn’t cut me out of,” he continued. “But a lot of those places, it was my sword that put me there to begin with.”

They were within easy shout of the count and his bodyguard. The guard stepped in front of Lerdoc and called, “You said bring one attendant, but you’ve brought two!”

He held his great shield out, sheltering the count and not-coincidentally preventing his advance. Lerdoc’s guards aren’t any happier about this than the Blood Eagles are, Sharina thought.

“Father!” Lerdain said.

With a snarl of anger, Count Lerdoc shoved the shield aside and stumped forward. He was alone for an instant before the guard got his balance and sprinted to catch up. The guard’s face was twisted into a silent curse.

Carus, his right hand on the boy’s shoulder and Sharina keeping pace to his left, met the count in the middle of the two armies. Carus gave Lerdain a pat, and said, “Go convince your father that you’re all right.”

The count clasped arms with his son, then stepped aside and glared at Carus. “You don’t have any cavalry,” he said. His voice was high-pitched with anger, almost like iron squealing. “What if I order my squadrons down on you?”

Carus shrugged. “I’m here to talk, not fight,” he said, “just as I told you when we arranged this. If I have to, I can take care of myself and my sister until the skirmishers get within javelin range of your horsemen. Though that won’t matter to you, of course.”

Lerdoc snorted. “I gave my word,” he said, as though that were the last thing to be said on the subject; as perhaps it was. “All right, you want to talk: talk, then!”

Sharina smiled at the huge Blaise armsman who stood beside the count with a furious expression. She hoped both to calm him and to convince him that she was a harmless girl and, therefore, to be disregarded.

Sharina wore the sheathed Pewle knife in the middle of her back, concealed beneath her cloak. If the worst happened, though, she wouldn’t draw it: she’d simply grab the guard’s sword wrist and hold on like grim death for the instant before the king stabbed through his visor slot.

But nothing like that would happen….

“While Valence my father lives—” Carus said.

“Father by adoption!” Lerdoc said. “You’re nothing but a peasant from Haft!”

“While Valence lives…” the king continued pleasantly, “he’s the King of the Isles. And when he dies, if the Lady has preserved me, I am King of the Isles. You needn’t believe I trace my lineage from the rulers of the Old Kingdom, milord, though that’s quite true. You must believe in my sword and the army I’ve forged to stretch my sword’s reach.”

“My men are veterans,” Lerdoc snarled. “I’ll crush you into the mud unless you surrender now. That’s the only thing we have to discuss!”

Still quiet but now with an edge in his voice, Carus said, “There’s no one who can overhear us, so let’s drop the bluster. It wastes time, and we’re short of that. Do you know the wizards who’re using you for a pawn? Do you know what Moon Wisdom really is?”

Lerdoc looked uncomfortable. He turned his head to the side as if gazing out to sea, and said, “I’m allied to the Confederacy of the West. If some of my allies have wizards working for them, that’s their business.”

“You’re a pawn,” Carus said forcefully. “The worst thing that could happen to you is that you win the battle you came to fight, because then you’d be wearing the yoke of something that isn’t human. But you needn’t worry about that, because you know full well that my pikemen would carve the heart out of any line you formed against them….”

The king threw his head back and laughed, startling Count Lerdoc and his guard. The boy watched with a look of puzzlement mixed with awe.

“Besides,” Carus went on cheerfully, “we’re not going to fight, you and I.”

“What’s your proposal, then,” the count said. “Because if you expect me to surrender—”

“Surrender what?” Carus said. “You’re the Count of Blaise, my ally and a bulwark of the kingdom against these rebel wizards. We march on Donelle together and call the city to surrender. The mercenaries inside ’ll open the gates as soon as they hear there’ll be amnesty for everybody but the ones who call themselves Children of the Mistress.”

His face was suddenly iron. He said, “Those will hang, every one of them.”

“What do I get out of this?” the count said. Lerdain’s eyes flicked from his to Carus and back again, as though he were watching a game of handball.

“Your life, as a start,” the king said softly. “The only thing that has less chance of survival than your army if you face mine is your merchantmen if you try to flee by sea from my warships.”

He grinned. “And I’ll give you another thing,” he said. “I’ll make your son my aide.”

“What?” said Lerdoc, setting his hand to his sword. His bodyguard lifted his shield so that he could swing it in front of his employer at need. “Take my boy hostage, you mean?”

“Of course he’ll be a hostage!” Carus snapped. “But he’ll be at my side during every council and meeting of the army command. He’ll have a real office, real honor, and if he’s as sharp as I think he is, he’ll learn real soldiering!”

“You’re a boy yourself!” Lerdoc said. “What can you teach Lerdain that I haven’t known for thirty years?”

For a moment Sharina thought she’d have to grab Carus again. She couldn’t always predict what would ignite the king’s volcanic temper, but she’d learned to read the tautness in the face muscles that momentarily preceded the sweep of hand to sword hilt.

Carus caught himself this time. He grinned and in a gentle, rasping voice said, “Let’s say that I’ve been well advised, then, milord.”

“Father?” said Lerdain. “The phalanx is—”

“Shut up, boy!” his father said.

“Silence, boy!” Carus said in the same breath.

The two grim leaders faced one another without speaking for a moment. Neither had looked away from the other when they dealt with the interruption.

“Milord,” the king said quietly, “you don’t need to tell me how dangerous a Blaise armsman is if he gets to close quarters. There’s nobody I’d rather have at my back when I went over a city wall or fought through the streets beyond. But your troops won’t get closer than pike length to the phalanx, and you know it.”

“Pikemen are clumsy,” Lerdoc said, but he was arguing for time while his mind weighed the options the king had offered. He looked over his shoulder, reassessing his own troops. “Besides, they’ve got flanks.”

“Which my heavy infantry will hold against anything you throw against them,” Carus said, forcefully but not shouting, “for longer than it takes for the phalanx to gut your army and then roll up your line from the middle. And as for clumsy, take a good look at what they’re doing now.”

“Milord,” Sharina said. She thought the two men might shout at her as they’d done the boy, but her they wouldn’t silence. She was Princess Sharina of Haft, and she had a right to speak. “We came into your camp and brought out your son—”

She nodded to Lerdain, hugging himself with frustration and embarrassment. A girl waiting tables in a country inn gets used to being bellowed at; the son and heir to a powerful throne does not.

“—to talk peace with you. If we’d wanted simply to end your part in the war, we wouldn’t have gone to the boy’s tent.”

“It was the two of them, father!” Lerdain burst out. “The prince and princess themselves!”

“You did that?” Lerdoc said to Carus. “And you, girl?”

Sharina nodded. She and the king didn’t speak.

“Maybe you’ve got something to teach me after all,” the count said. He sighed and seemed to deflate slightly, like a hog’s bladder taken outside in winter. “May the Lady help me, I knew I shouldn’t get mixed up with wizards.”

Carus clasped arms with the older man. “Let’s go to Donelle and cure the mistake,” the king said. “And if they don’t open the gates for us willingly, we’ll see how well Blaise armsmen follow their king into the city the hard way, eh?”

“And follow your aide, your highness!” cried Lord Lerdain.

Both the count and his bodyguard gave the boy stricken looks. Carus merely said, “There’ll be a time for that, lad. But not, I think, today.”

His lifted his face to the sky and boomed his mighty laughter as the armies looked on in wonder.

The sun glinted down into Cashel’s eyes. He slitted them, but he didn’t want to look away from Tilphosa and Metra even though he couldn’t help matters while bound. He wriggled, wishing that he hadn’t taken care that his knife fit tightly in its sheath. If he could shake the blade loose, then roll over to pick it up with the hands tied behind his back—

Then the Archai would take the weapon away from him. It was still something to try.

“Did you think you were free, Tilphosa?” the wizard said. “The Mistress guided you here, as surely as She guided me to meet you. She’s the Mistress of All; Her web is the whole of present time.”

“Not my mistress, Metra,” Tilphosa said in a tight voice. Her tense arm muscles showed she was struggling against the grip of the two Archai holding her, though neither she nor they moved that Cashel could see. The insect monsters were deceptively strong.

“Your Mistress still, girl,” Metra said. “The Mistress of All, whether you choose to believe it or not.”

She leaned forward and slipped the ruby ring onto the fourth finger of Tilphosa’s left hand. Stepping back, she continued, “You will join Lord Thalemos, as the Mistress planned. And when you do, your rings combined will open the way for Her to return.”

Tilphosa clenched and unclenched her fist, trying to work the jewel onto the underside of her finger so that it didn’t catch the light. Metra gestured; one of the Archai straightened the girl’s hand again and rotated the ring back to where it had been.

“The next time you do that,” the wizard said, “they’ll break your fingers. That won’t affect the spell, you realize.”

Cashel squirmed forward. If he got a little closer, he could swing his legs to knock the Archa holding Tilphosa’s left hand off its—

One of the creatures behind Cashel gripped his ankle with the pincer of a forelimb and jerked him back. Cashel felt the tickle of blood starting to run down his heel.

Metra’s peal of laughter began discordantly and rose to a cackle just this side of madness. “I’ve been with the Mistress often since you left,” she said. “Every night She comes to me, Tilphosa. I’m very close to Her now.”

She laughed again, even more wildly than before. Tilphosa watched warily, relaxing her muscles for the moment.

“Did your Mistress make the ring?” Cashel said. He understood Metra, now. She’d taken the Mistress into her mind, and those who the Gods ride don’t stay sane or even human. The wizard might decide to do anything; if Cashel got her talking, it might pull her back toward sanity before a whim told her to cut Tilphosa’s throat.

“Not Her,” Metra said triumphantly. “The Intercessor Echea fashioned the rings, the ruby and the sapphire.”

“The Intercessor serves the Mistress?” Tilphosa said. “I don’t believe you!”

Cashel didn’t care about the answers to the questions—they wouldn’t help him get loose, which was the only thing important—but it sounded like the girl did. Either way, it kept Metra talking.

“The pattern can only exist once in the cosmos, girl,” Metra said. “Echea hoped to thwart the Mistress by cutting the gems and concealing them, so that we Children of the Mistress could neither find nor form the pattern ourselves. Echea’s own wizardry burned her to a husk, but still the Mistress has succeeded!”

Metra’s laughter was as brittle as breaking glass. The Archai stood motionless, watching like statues of waxed bronze. Could they understand what the wizard was saying? Now that he thought about it, Cashel wondered if they even heard human speech.

“Echea drove the Archai out of this city, didn’t she?” Tilphosa said. “Echea defeated the Mistress.”

“Echea is dead!” Metra shouted. “She’s dead, and her descendents will be destroyed! Now, shut your mouth, lady, or I’ll have your tongue plucked out. You won’t bleed to death in the time I need for you to remain alive.”

“Do as you please, Metra,” the girl said quietly. She seemed calm; completely a lady, completely self-assured even under the present conditions. “I don’t know what the future will bring, but I know the past brought your Mistress defeat.”

Metra stared at her. The expression Cashel saw flit across the wizard’s face was fear, unmistakably fear. Though it was gone as quickly as it appeared, it gave Cashel the hope he’d been lacking for the last while.

Somebody who says things with perfect assurance is convincing even if when you step out from the words you can see that they’re not really certain after all. It’s hard to get away from that kind of spell, especially if you’re trussed like a hen on market day.

Metra’s fright proved that her heart knew that the Mistress could fail, whatever her mind let her mouth say. Cashel’s world brightened by a considerable degree.

It didn’t change what Cashel would do, of course. He didn’t seem to be making any progress working at the cords holding him, but he didn’t have a better idea right now. He continued to strain and twist, then relax, in hope that he’d feel a change in his bonds. Not yet, but maybe the next time….

Metra took her athame from the satchel which held the tools of her art. She looked at it, then put it back and picked up Cashel’s quarterstaff instead. The weight made her frown.

“Iron caps,” she said with a tinge of anger as she examined the ferrules. “I believed you at first when you said you weren’t a wizard. I should have known better. And only a very powerful wizard can work with iron.”

“Your eyes are wide, Metra,” Tilphosa said. “Even in this bright sun. Have you drugged yourself so you don’t have to see the truth?”

The wizard didn’t appear to be listening. She began to draw in the courtyard’s soft silt with Cashel’s staff, making symbols in a circle around Tilphosa.

“Or aren’t you really there anymore, is that it?” Tilphosa said, her voice rising with anger. “Is it the Mistress speaking through your body? Your God doesn’t care if She leaves you blind after She’s done with you!”

Metra dropped the staff without looking where it fell. Even so it was too far away for Cashel to reach, unfortunately. He couldn’t have grabbed it anyway, tied as he was, but it would’ve been good at least to touch the hickory.

Tilphosa glanced down at Cashel. She was emotionally taut and breathing hard. Cashel smiled.

He was proud of his companion: she wasn’t giving up even the least little bit. They’d get out of this, he figured; and if they didn’t, well, Garric and the others would take care of things.

Metra gave Cashel a cruel smile. “Your staff was the perfect tool to form the words of power,” she said. “You’ve been a great help to the Mistress.”

She giggled uncontrollably, closing her eyes in her delight. When the fit passed she grinned at Cashel again, and added, “Your sister is named Ilna, isn’t she?”

Cashel kept his face impassive.

“Yes, Ilna,” Metra went on. “The Mistress told me. Your sister is aiding the Mistress in Her works just as you are.”

Cashel felt his face growing red. He said nothing, but he strained his arms and legs against each other, trying to snap the cords that joined them. They cut him, but that wouldn’t have mattered if he could’ve felt even a little movement in his bonds.

Metra took a pair of flasks made from sturgeon’s bladder from her satchel. They were closed with wooden plugs and tendon overties; she undid the ties and poured pinches of glittering powder from each into the symbols she’d drawn in a circle around Tilphosa. One flask seemed to hold blue vitriol, but the other crystals were the color of cinnabar.

Tilphosa watched with a look of sneering disgust. Though she wasn’t bound, the Archai gripped her by both wrist and ankle, holding her as securely as if she’d been nailed to a broad plank.

The sun was at zenith. Metra looked toward it without even trying to shade her eyes. Cashel winced, though the wizard didn’t seem to be affected by the blinding glare.

“The time is come,” Metra said in a tone of reverent wonder. She didn’t seem to be speaking to anyone, even to herself. She tossed down the flasks without bothering to stopper them over the remaining contents.

Cashel expected the wizard either to pick up his quarterstaff or to take out her own athame. Instead Metra raised her arms straight in the air, and cried, “Noma para sarapamon!”

A spark of red light snapped from Tilphosa’s ring and touched the powdered contents. The crystals flared up fiercer than the sun, dual coils of red and blue wrapping around one another. The twisting column rose higher than the stone walls of the courtyard, waking fresh glints from the tiny ruby.

The blaze thinned, then swelled fiercely again like a great artery pulsing as a heartbeat. “Pseriphtha misontaik thooth,” Metra chanted.

Something bellowed in the swamp. There was a splash and a second bellow, this time closer. It sounded to Cashel like the call of a seawolf, the great marine lizards which had sometimes come ashore to snatch sheep from his flock.

Seawolves lived in the salt sea, not the fresh waters of rivers and swamps like those this city had risen from. There must be something similar here, though.

“Phokensepseu,” said the wizard, “erektathous phokentatou!”

The first flare was beginning to die down. The powder in a deep-dug symbol on the other side of Tilphosa blazed in turn, throbbing in the same rhythm.

“Ptolema ptolemes origins…” Metra said.

Water spouted high enough that Cashel could see the column above the walls surrounding him. An Archa, or perhaps only the head and torso of an Archa, was caught in it. The screaming roar of some great reptile choked off in blood, though the swamp continued to quiver.

The creature hadn’t been powerful enough to penetrate the circle of the city’s defenders. Cashel had no reason to trust the Intercessor and his allies, but right at the moment he’d have been willing to give the fellow a try.

He twisted against the ropes. Tilphosa was straining also. It was worth a try….

A third word of power burst into flame as the wizard chanted. The first had sunk to spluttering embers, and the second was a pale ghost of its full glory.

The facets of Tilphosa’s ring flashed brighter than reflections should have been in full daylight. They threw a pattern onto the air itself: at first like gnats circling, then more fiercely and spreading into an oval.

Metra was forming a door into another place. Cashel didn’t see any way to stop her, but he was pretty sure that somebody’d better do that—and he was closer than other people.

The powder in a fourth word ignited, this time on the side closest Cashel. He braced himself to roll over the flames. An Archa tugged him back with the same brutal efficiency as before; he hadn’t even had a chance to move.

“Thiatcha thotho achaipho!” Metra screamed. She staggered with the effort of climaxing her spell. The powder in the three remaining words roared up simultaneously.

Unexpectedly, the Archai holding Tilphosa released the girl. She fell into Cashel when the grip she’d been struggling against no longer held her.

“It’s done,” Metra said in a wondering voice. She looked at Cashel and Tilphosa. “I didn’t even need your blood, stranger. I thought that was why the Mistress had sent you here, but that wasn’t the reason after all.”

“Nobody sent me here,” Cashel said tightly. “Tilphosa, take my knife out and cut me loose.”

Metra blinked and rubbed her eyes. She seemed none the worse for looking into the sun, but the power that had ridden her during the past hour had now released her.

“It doesn’t matter what you do,” Metra said calmly. The wizard’s emotions seemed to have burned to ash along with the powder she’d poured into the words drawn in the silt. “Your ring can only close the portal from the other side, Tilphosa; and there the Mistress waits to enter Her kingdom.”

Tilphosa tugged Cashel’s knife from its sheath of wood battens wrapped and tensioned with rawhide. She sawed the cord tying his hands to his feet, deliberately ignoring Metra and the lens of light forming in the air behind her. Cashel straightened thankfully, then held still for the girl to hack through the bonds holding his wrists.

The Archai didn’t interfere. The whole vast crowd of them was staring at the portal as it slowly clarified.

Metra began to laugh. Cashel thought she was having another attack of hysterics; and perhaps it was, but the laughter turned suddenly to tears.

“She is Queen of the World!” the wizard cried. “Her time is come again! Nothing can change Her will!”

The cords broke. Cashel swung his arms forward and flexed them; his wrists were slick with blood.

“Give me the knife!” he said in a husky voice. He’d waited patiently while he had to; now that he could move again, the emotions pumping through his blood threatened to take him over. “I’ll get my ankles.”

Metra’s portal was an oval of solid light above the words of power. Vague shapes moved on the other side. Though it was noonday in the risen city, it was brighter still in the world Tilphosa’s ring had opened.

Cashel’s knife was a rural blacksmith’s product, not a piece of fine cutlery. The iron blade sharpened easily and took a keen edge, but this rope’s tough fibers had dulled it. Cashel set his knife carefully, then pulled until he’d severed the tight bonds.

For a moment he thought the blade would snap instead. He’d already frayed the cord, so he’d have finished breaking free by main strength if he’d had to.

Cashel stood, taking deep breaths as he looked for his quarterstaff. He was dizzy from straining against the ropes for so long. The tags of cord still dangled from his bloody wrists and ankles, but they wouldn’t get in his way.

“Cashel, look at this,” Tilphosa said, her voice rising. She knelt in the soft dirt and stared at the hole opening in the fabric of this world. “Look!”

Cashel hadn’t been paying much attention to the portal. He glanced at it, slitting his eyes against the glare. A barrier remained between the worlds, though it was becoming thinner, like a puddle in the sun. On the other side were three figures, reptilian though seemingly boneless.

They were slender but very tall. One held a girl in its tentacle; she looked like a poppet in a child’s hand. That creature and its companions had pierced her with their spiked tongues and were rasping out the victim’s juices like woodpeckers sharing a grub.

“Is that your Mistress, wizard?” Cashel asked.

He picked up his staff, rolling it through the skirt of his tunic to clean off the dirt. The hickory was smoothed by years of his palms’ touch and polished with his body oils. Its touch made him feel at home again.

The assembled Archai keened like the winter wind across chimney pots. Those on top of the wall vanished suddenly, leaping down to scramble through the maze of streets leading away.

The Archai inside the courtyard turned as one and struggled in chittering fury to flee. Warriors jammed the many doorways, hacking at one another in their desperation to escape. The courtyard cleared suddenly; two twitching bodies and a severed forelimb remained on the trampled silt.

Tilphosa rose to her feet. “Metra, what are they?” she said.

Metra stared at the portal; it was clearing as it expanded. Her mouth drooped open, and she seemed to be trying to point with her left hand, but she couldn’t get words out.

Tilphosa slapped her hard. “What are they?” she shouted.

“The Pack are loose,” Metra said. “The way between the Mistress and this world is open, but the Pack are loose!”

Metra sat down hard, as though her legs could no longer support her. She began to laugh hysterically.

“Loose!” she shrieked. “All life, everywhere in the cosmos, doomed! We took the Pack from their cell, but now they’re loose!”

The portal continued to expand. Cashel wondered how big it would finally become. Big enough to let the Pack through, he guessed.

Cashel spun his staff out at his right side, then overhead. He started with simple circles, then drew figure eights. He didn’t feel the fatigue and stiffness of being tied anymore, and the itching pain where his skin had rubbed off was only a faint memory.

“Metra,” Cashel said hoarsely, “how do we close this hole you made?”

The wizard held her sides as she laughed, rocking back and forth. Tilphosa bent and cocked her hand for another slap.

Metra’s face cleared. Perfectly lucid and in a tone of cold malevolence, she said, “Shine your ring on the portal from the other side, girl. That’s all. It will shrink and close as it’s expanding now. Except that the Pack will suck you dry before they devour all the rest of us!”

Tilphosa straightened and looked at Cashel. “Will you guard me?” she said simply.

“Sure,” said Cashel. “As long as I can.”

The portal was transparent in the center, though the edges had a milky tinge like the membrane inside the shell of a hard-boiled egg. Both the clear portion and the border expanded slowly, like water pooling on a flat surface.

Tilphosa put her hand out to the hole; her flesh passed through unaffected. The creatures on the other side watched; only their tongues moved.

The girl took a deep breath and poised. Cashel stepped between her and the portal. “Guess I’ll go first,” he said.

He clambered through. The translucent edge had a spongy feeling, but the clear center was plenty big enough for his body.

The sun here was a hammer. The ground was a stony waste with no sign of life or water. He heard Tilphosa’s breath catch as she followed him.

The Pack, swaying like monstrous willow trees, glided toward them on short, fat legs.

As they came, the one holding their first victim tossed the emptied body away.

Ilna’s fingers knotted cords with a swift ease that kept her calm. For as far down the valley as her eyes could see, giant spiders were leaving their webs and walking toward her. Their spindly legs and cautious pace reminded her of cripples on crutches.

DRINK HER BLOOD. SUCK HER DRY.

Of course, in these numbers even cripples could kill her. She smiled. It was as good an expression as any to wear as you prepared for death.

Ilna looked over her shoulder, just in case the giants behind her had mounted their side of the dome more quickly than those she’d just watching killing the sheep and shepherd. She found that she wanted to face her slayer rather than feel the sudden icy shock of fangs driving into her body from behind.

Was that pride, bragging that she wasn’t afraid? Well, there wasn’t anybody here to blame her for pride.

Ilna was afraid, of course. Not of death, exactly, but while being torn apart by fangs dripping amber poison might be quick, it certainly wouldn’t be clean or painless.

She’d failed in her mission for Tenoctris—and for Garric. That was a worse pain still, but it too would end with her death.

Some might say she’d failed the Isles, the kingdom. Ilna had never met a kingdom, so she didn’t know. She understood friendship, though, and duty.

DRAIN HER TO A HUSK!

Ilna’s fingers wove and knotted, adding cords to a pattern already more complex than anything she’d attempted in the past. Above Ilna the barrier shifted as her fingers moved; and with every change, another layer became clear in her mind.

The spiders picked their way toward her. Ilna frowned. She knew the creatures were clumsy on the ground, but she’d seen them stagger toward their victims a few minutes before. They were awkward, but because of their size and long legs they nonetheless moved as fast as a horse could run. Now…

For a moment Ilna thought the spiders were afraid of her. Her patterns could stun, could kill. Spiders whose skills were second only to hers would understand that—but they would also know that their size and numbers could overwhelm her.

Besides, they could see that she wasn’t weaving a weapon. They knew Ilna was tearing an escape route between their world and the wider cosmos.

SHE MUST NOT ESCAPE! the chorus shrilled; and at last Ilna understood.

For a moment her fingers paused. Oh, the spiders knew what Ilna was doing, all right: she was about to achieve the thing which they in the ages of their exile had never been able to do.

She was going to show these monsters the way back to the world from which some ancient wizard had barred them. The way to Ilna’s own world.

Ilna looked up at the barrier. The eyes of her soul showed her the final pattern, the path for which she’d been searching.

Yes, of course. I was right to trust Her craftsmanship.

Ilna’s fingers gathered and knotted, making the last adjustments to her linked cords. Above her the milky barrier cleared in response.

A needlepoint of white light flashed on the hillside before Ilna. It spread jaggedly, a tear racing through the fabric separating the spider world from the greater cosmos.

SHE HAS OPENED THE WAY!

Ilna could close the gap again, but that wouldn’t matter. The spiders couldn’t create the pattern, but they could duplicate it now that they had seen Ilna’s masterpiece.

SHE HAS OPENED THE WAY!

The giants stumbled up the slope, maddened by the thought of the warm blood that waited on the other side to slake their age-long thirst. Ilna thought of the future of webs and monsters she’d glimpsed in the Intercessor’s mind. She understood now what he feared.

Ilna stepped through the opening as giant spiders staggered toward her from all sides. She was smiling.

The chamber in which Garric stood had been a burial place for the wealthy and powerful. Three deep niches were cut into either sidewall of an arched vault; in each of them was a sarcophagus of marble or porphyry. The ends of five had floral designs, but the last showed a man in flowing robes gesturing to a crowd which knelt reverently. Behind the central figure, holding a wreath and crescent moon with which to crown him, was a giant spider.

Lord Thalemos followed Garric into the chamber, his hand stretching back to help Vascay. The chieftain’s peg didn’t grip as well on the slant of crumbling rock as a boot or bare sole.

The three men stared at the delicate carving. “Here’s the wealth Ademos and the others were looking for,” Garric said. “Think what carvings this fine would be worth in Valles or Erdin. If you could get them there.”

“Would people pay for this?” Thalemos said. “A spider?”

“People will pay for anything,” Vascay said, wheezing between his words. “Some people will, boy. After all, it wasn’t sand crabs who carved that with their claws.”

Metron, sliding and gasping, stumbled into the chamber. His torch waved wildly.

Vascay cursed as the flames whisked close. He touched his javelin point to the wizard’s throat. “I’ve left you alive when maybe I shouldn’t have,” he said, “but don’t push your luck!”

“Lord Thalemos?” Metron said. He steadied the torch, but he gave no other sign that he’d heard Vascay’s threat. “Here, take the ring. You have to wear it yourself now.”

The wizard held out his left hand with the sapphire on the middle finger. He couldn’t pull it off himself because he held the torch in his right, its oily red flames now licking the ceiling. The vault’s fresco showed painted webs connecting the moon in the center to the six burial niches. Plaster blackened, and a piece fell off.

“To reach Lady Tilphosa?” the youth said doubtfully. “Is that what you mean?”

“Put the ring on or we’ll all die here when the Intercessor comes for us!” Metron said. “It’s our only chance!”

Thalemos reached for the ring. Garric watched without expression; he didn’t know what the right decision was. He wouldn’t interfere with the wizard’s direction, but—

He took the torch from Metron’s right hand. The wizard resisted momentarily, then gave it up. Garric started down the passageway at the back of the chamber, with Vascay following him closely.

The passage had been used for burials, but in a much more economical fashion than the vault. Instead of niches large enough for a sarcophagus, the deep slots cut in the soft rock here were barely big enough to hold the corpse itself in a winding sheet. The passage was so narrow that Vascay had to walk sideways. To fit bodies into these six-high banks, they must have been bent at the waist and fed through like hawsers being coiled in a ship’s hold.

“It’s a good place to defend,” Vascay observed.

“Echeon would dig down through the roof,” Metron called from the end of the line. His voice echoed among graves which the ages had emptied. “He’ll know where we are. We must go farther.”

Garric continued forward, his sword in his right hand and the torch before him in his left. The passage sloped steeply downward. There were no frescoes in this portion of the catacombs, but prayers and eight-pointed stars scratched in the rock showed that the poor were as pious as their betters.

Even in death they were segregated, though. It was the way of the world, he supposed.

Garric stepped into another large chamber, this one circular and domed instead of being roofed with a barrel vault. From the end of the passage, a flight of seven steps led down to a tessellated pavement. Engaged columns carved from the living rock ornamented the walls; medallions were painted in the spaces between them. An arched doorway led off from the other side.

Garric paused only a moment at the head of the stairs before stepping down to the sunken pavement. The scuff of his bare feet was syncopated by the thump/tap of Vascay’s boot and peg behind him. Lord Thalemos followed a moment later.

“Yes, that’s right!” Metron said. “Thalemos, stand in the center. Move yourself, boy! How long do you think we have?”

Garric turned to eye his companions for the first time since entering the passage of the dead. The wizard had shown a febrile liveliness since his incantations on the cliff’s edge. Now he put a hand forward as if to hasten Thalemos with a push.

Garric thought of Ademos, gurgling his life out on the cliff’s edge so that more monsters could rise from the sea. “No!” he said. “Don’t touch him!”

He raised his sword and strode back toward the steps. “No! by the Shepherd,” Garric said. “Thalemos, come here. Wizard, leave us. If you come near this boy again, I’ll kill you!”

“We’ll go out the other way,” Vascay said, stumping past Garric and Thalemos. He held the javelin poised to throw in his right hand.

Metron drew the bloody athame from his sash but remained where he was, midway down the stone stairs. Garric watched him for a moment, then turned to follow Vascay.

“Master Gar?” Thalemos said. “I can take the light to free your hands. Ah, if you’d like?”

“Right,” said Garric, grateful but a little irritated not to have thought of that himself without the youth suggesting it. He turned, and as he did so the pattern on the floor caught his eye. He paused, lifting the torch to illuminate the whole area.

From the top of the steps Garric had thought the flooring of stone chips was laid in the matrix randomly. From his present angle these few feet lower, he saw that the polished gray tesserae formed a subtle pattern of radial lines with circular lines crossing them. Spaced at intervals—

“The floor’s a spiderweb,” Garric said. “There’s words in the Old Script around the center. The whole room’s been prepared for a wizard’s spell.”

“Then let’s get out, shall we?” Vascay said, his voice loud with tension. His words echoed sullenly from the dome.

Garric handed the torch to Thalemos. His movement shook a bead of sap from the burning wood onto his wrist; it stabbed like a stiletto, causing him almost to drop the torch instead of passing it.

Vascay looked over his shoulder. “Hey!” he shouted, cocking the javelin to throw. Garric turned to see what the threat was. “Sister take that wizard!”

“Aphre nemous nothii…” Metron chanted. Using the step for a dais, he gestured with the bloody athame. “Baphre neou nothii….”

Torchlight touched Thalemos’ ring, waking the sapphire into blue fire. The facets flung brilliant reflections around the walls and dome. Garric’s body turned to ice; he could neither move nor speak, though his senses seemed unnaturally acute, and his skin prickled.

“Lari…” called the wizard. “Kriphii kriphiae kriphis!”

The walls blurred into a smooth spinning expanse of blue. The floor was fading, becoming a tunnel that stretched toward infinite distance; overhead was the night sky of some other time. The three men stood like flies trapped on the web-marked stone. The wizard above them chanted triumphantly, “Phirke rali thonoumene!”

Garric felt the ground beneath his feet give way. In a rush of gravel and powdered rock, he tumbled into a vaster room a dozen feet below the first. He could move again, but he’d lost his sword and couldn’t breathe for the dust. He tugged the front of his tunic over his mouth and sucked air through the cloth.

Vascay had fallen at the same time Garric did. Lord Thalemos had been standing in the center of the upper chamber; he was still there, supported by a pillar rising from the floor of this lower one. The wizardlight was gone, so the only illumination was from the youth’s torch flaring through the dust clouds.

“She is come!” Metron shrieked ecstatically. “The Mistress is come into Her kingdom!”

Vascay stumbled over to Garric, breathing through his sleeve. The fall had broken his javelin, but he still held the half of the shaft with the point.

“I’ll lift you,” he said in a muffled voice. “We’ll heap stones up at the far end, and then I’ll lift you.”

Garric nodded, his lungs on fire. He couldn’t get enough air through his thick tunic. He had to restrain himself from gasping in an unfiltered breath that would suffocate him.

Vascay started toward the mass piled against the wall opposite where Metron stood. Garric followed, feeling the rock shift under his bare feet. No piece of the previous floor bigger than a walnut remained, so why did it mound so high there in front of them? The dust and gravel should have slipped—

The mass moved. It was alive, if barely.

“Vascay!” Garric shouted. He was too late. Four huge, hairy legs traced a pattern in the air. Garric had seen Ilna’s quickly knotted cords paralyze men bent on murder; now a similar power bound his body in bonds of fire.

“She is come!” Metron repeated.

The dust had settled. Thalemos was locked into a statue on his pedestal, gripped by the same compulsion as held Garric and Vascay. The torch in his hand lighted the scene below. The column under him shielded the wizard from the creature’s spell.

The legs shifted the rhythm of their movement slightly. Vascay dropped the javelin. His body stepped forward, controlled by a will not his own.

The thing was a spider, huge beyond nightmare. Millennia of imprisonment left it desiccated, but still it lived. For ages it had spoken in dreams; and when the protecting walls of rock and wizardry had ruptured, it moved.

The Mistress was calling the first of many meals to herself. When she had finished with the victims brought to her chamber here, she would return to the upper world and to lordship over all other life. She was not a god, for all that Metron and the others who lived her dreams thought otherwise, but her mastery over anyone who saw her conferred godlike power.

Vascay walked toward the waiting jaws like a man already dead. The eight eyes glittering in the torchlight watched him. If extended, the Mistress’s legs could have spanned Palace Square in Carcosa, where thousands had gathered to listen to the monarchs of the Old Kingdom. Now the limbs were crabbed close together, leaving only enough space for the victim they pulled toward them by their quivering power.

Vascay stepped between the legs. When he could no longer see the pattern they drew, he shouted and managed to half turn before the Mistress sank her fangs in his back. His body stiffened.

The spider’s mandibles pumped up and down alternately; a fang stabbed out through the tunic over Vascay’s ribs, withdrew, and then penetrated him again a hand’s breadth higher than the first time. A drop of venom, orange in the torchlight, dripped to the floor. Powdered rock hissed and steamed.

Garric watched Vascay’s body empty like a slashed wineskin. Only when venom had wholly liquified the muscles did the frozen limbs collapse and the head loll forward. Vascay’s features had blurred into shadows on the skin, but his skull still kept its shape.

The Mistress flung aside the carcase of her first victim. Her forelegs played the same silent tune but with a greater verve, nourished for the first time in thousands of years. Garric felt his right leg move.

He’d have held it back if he could, but his body was no longer his own. Compulsion pulled like white-hot wires. A step, then a second step.

The waiting mandibles throbbed slowly, up and down. They weren’t part of the spider’s pattern but rather a sign of her bloodlust. Her hind legs extended with the creaking care of ancient machines beginning to work again.

Garric’s right leg took another step. The broken javelin rolled under his foot. His left leg started to move.

Lord Thalemos screamed; reflex hurled the torch from his hand. It shed sparks in an arc that ended when it went out in the dust. Thalemos slapped at the sleeve of his tunic, burning where a drop of blazing sap had fallen onto the cloth. The chamber was again in total darkness.

Garric picked up the javelin. He couldn’t see for the Mistress to bind him, but her location was etched onto his mind. He lunged forward.

She wasn’t a god. She wasn’t immortal. And though there’d be no one to write his epitaph, Garric knew he was about to die a man and for Mankind.

His outstretched left hand touched the right mandible, just above the fang. The spider’s hair was as coarse as the bristles of a boar’s spine.

The forelegs gripped him from behind. As the mandibles reached for him, Garric stabbed between them—up through the Mistress’s mouth and into her brain.

The giant spider’s convulsions drove her fangs home. In the midst of the burst of fire that devoured all his nerves, Garric felt the poison-spewing points grate against one another in the middle of his torso.

Then all was blackness.